Monday, November 25, 2013

You know the classic move in the V8 commercials? The slap on your forehead that accompanies the great enlightenment and insight?

Yeah, I had one of those this weekend.

During slow moments at the show I was doing, I worked on bezeling a couple of donuts from my stash. Peyote is my usual bezel choice, but this time it felt like time to try a right angle weave bezel.

Yes, most of the seed beading world has done these. Yes, I realize that my insecurities about RAW is irrational, and can only be overcome by working through it. And yes, I have had many previous escapades with the stitch that ended in bug-ugly projects, inappropriate language being thrown around, and frustration.

And you know what? This time it came together like magic! I don't know why. I can't explain it. Perhaps it was an early holiday miracle.

So I did two. The photos aren't great, but here they are...

There's no telling what they'll eventually become part of , but I think the smaller one is going to get some spikes...stay tuned!

Saturday, November 16, 2013

The fabulous Therese of Therese's Treasures is having a birthday, and she's given some of her friends gifts to play with.

Me and the birthday girl!

Let me tell you about my friend Therese. We met through blogging, and through our conversations discovered that I had known and worked with her brother when I lived in Alabama (small, small world!!). She is funny, warm hearted, generous, and has an insatiable curiosity that leads her to explore new jewelry techniques. In addition to always pushing herself to new levels of beadweaving beauty, she's learned PMC and glass fusing. What next? I predict fencing, competitive baking, and/or writing an award winning novel.
To celebrate her birthday, she dipped into the results of her latest exploration, and sent each challenge participant one of the fused glass cabs she's made.

I got the gorgeous, delicious cobalt blue triangle. It has small flecks of clear dichroic, which give it a subtle effervescence, like little bubbles of champagne right beneath the surface. Because Therese always explores new ideas in her work, I wanted to figure out a new way to incorporate beadweaving into the bezel surrounding this cab.

Since I'd been playing around with twin beads, I explored ways to use them.

See the little sparkles of dichroic? Lovely!

A twin bead herringbone strip was the perfect width for the height of the cab, and the unusual shape of the cab allowed me to twist the strip so that part of it laid down around the cab and part of it snugged up on end. And the rest of the necklace?

Since I love cobalt blue so much, I figured there's never too much of a good thing -- I pulled out lots of blue beads in my stash.

The webbed beads are vintage Japanese glass. The pewter wavy discs have a sparkly finish that echoes the dichro in the cab. And pearls are classic, perfect to salute a classic lady.

Thanks for letting me celebrate your birthday Therese! Here are the other partygoers, so go grab a slice of cake and enjoy:

Sunday, November 3, 2013

A while back, my friend Christine at OneKissCreations invited me to take part in a rolling hop -- she'd send each of us a goodie package with a mystery component and some additional beads, and we could create something to share on our own schedule within a certain time period. I love Christine's sense of humor, sense of style, and sense of creativity, so of course I said yes.

The package arrived, and, with great ladylike grace and restraint (snort), I ripped it open to discover the mystery component. And my thought process was something like, "Spools! Spools? Hmmm, spools....."

The image that kept coming to me over and over again when I thought of spools was one of my maternal grandmother, who spent a couple of years (or at least it seemed to me, although given a kid's sense of time, it probably was only a several months) making a pair of quilts, which she then gave to me and my sister.

So my creation was going to be a reflection of my grandmother, who we called MeMaw, her style, and her quilt. Here's a little bit about my MeMaw -- she and my grandfather had a farm, although she also worked in town. She had gorgeous snow white hair, long legs and a terrific figure (which, sadly, I did not inherit), a great smile, and always took care to dress with flair. She had an incredible strength and spirit. I so wish my children could have known her.

Anyway, here's MeMaw, and here is a section of the quilt she made for me.

See what I mean about dressing with flair? She's wearing a silk dress andfab jewelry, even though the infant me might have spit up or donesomething else messy at any moment. The lady had style and guts!

The quilt is queen-sized, and I have yet to find a square that has a duplicated fabric center.

And I'm happy to introduce to you MeMaw's Quilt Necklace.

I decided the best way to capture the idea of the quilt was to wrap the spool in a quilt of beads. I made a right angle weave base, and added every small bead I could find in my stash to the open squares. There are gemstones, crystals, Czech glass, and pearls in there -- hopefully a faithful reflection of MeMaw's love of sparkly jewelry. For the neckstrap, I braided some beautiful sari silk that I had from another swap, AntiquityTraveler's blogoversary hop. The color was a perfect mimic for the background of the quilt. I will admit to having had fifteen different kinds of fits trying to figure out a clasp, since the silk wasn't long enough to allow me to loop it over, but I finally came up with one that I was happy with.

I tried really hard to do like MeMaw and not repeat any beads in the squares, but there are a couple of duplicates.

The Quilt on the quilt

Thanks, Christine, for letting me play along! And if you're interested in seeing what the others have created (and the results so far are pretty eclectic, kind of like the artists involved), here's a list: